Novell’s GroupWise is a collaboration and messaging platform to facilitate emailing, calendaring, instant messaging, personal information management, and document management. As the technology is evolving rapidly, new techniques and approaches are majorly forcing the existing email platforms to buckle down to compete with the advanced and demanding era. Microsoft Exchange Server, another collaborative platform in conjunction with the competent desktop application Outlook, pulls the attention by having implemented smart abilities. Microsoft has been trying best to challenge the requirements and demands of end users. One thing to point out is if GroupWise and MS Exchange both are designed to serve the same purpose, why people prefer migrating to MS Exchange from GroupWise.

“All That Glitters Is Not Gold”; every place where there is a competitive environment, excellence matters. Microsoft Exchange Server offers an unending list of benefits over Novell’s GroupWise that mobilize organizations to make a jump. Some of the reasons are technical, while others are related to business arena. Furthermore, Microsoft has been releasing a number of Exchange versions. The recent versions like Exchange 2010, 2013 have brought many improvements in terms of flexibility in integration, better management, greater ease of use, etc. The ability to integrate on-premises and online deployments is outstanding in these versions, and therefore migrating from GroupWise to Exchange offers numerous benefits.

Change in Requirements

Business plans and requirements change regularly as per new standards. Novell GroupWise is not able to cope with such rapid changes, and hence it is not worth it to continue with such application. On the other hand, Exchange Server has the ability to satisfy your changing business requirements.

Support for Vendor Applications

One of the various requirements of business includes vendor applications that might not be supported by GroupWise; however, MS Exchange supports most applications, and hence is able to be deployed in your organization.

Outlook is Easier

With enhanced functionality of MS Outlook, users find it immensely helpful and easy to use, learn, and understand. On the other hand, GroupWise does not offer similar features and smoothness in functioning. The features like notes, rules, task management, and alert make Outlook a powerful application. Moreover, Outlook offers smarter meeting scheduling feature, allowing users to search for appropriate times. Accessing mailboxes of users as proxy is also easy, as Outlook allows you to access the mailbox in the same folder list as your PST folders or mailbox.

Exchange Server offers these advantages. Well, next, you will be instructed with the tips that must be implemented during the entire migration process. Get started with the following:

Run Test Migrations

It is understood that you may encounter various challenges and problems while carrying out the procedure. Therefore, it is good to run as many test migrations as possible so that you could assess the requirements, know the consequences of what you have implemented, and understand the challenges in advance. Doing it will prevent you from facing all this during original migration. After you have run all the tests, make a note of the number of failed messages. Test migrations are greatly helpful in determining the required amount of space that may vary according to the GroupWise version and the platform it is running on.

Plan a Good Migration Strategy

Prior to initiating a crucial task like GroupWise to Exchange migration, it is mandatory to plan a successful strategy that will help you produce desired outcome. For example, in case of a small or medium-sized organization, you can perform migration using big bang approach that means carrying out the process in short span of time with proper planning. However, migration in a large organization takes time and requires coexistence and coherence. So, whichever planning strategy you pick must be according to the needs of organization, depending on the size in this case.

Specify Criterion

It is good to specify some criterion that you can use to assess whether your migration has met specific requirements or not. Note that there are several reasons that do not let all the GroupWise data migrate; it does not mean that data in bulk will be left, but yes some bits will be. Therefore, it is impractical to set criterion that include 100% data migration. Set a practical threshold and try to achieve it.

Keep Track on the Process

It is an intelligent idea to keep track of the entire migration process so that you can easily determine how many messages have been migrated and how many are left. Make sure that the utility you have chosen for this task creates separate logs for each mailbox that participates in the migration process. The logs must contain the number of appointments and messages in the mailbox prior to migration. Now, calculate the percentage by adding filtered items counts to moved items count, subtracting the number of errors, and then dividing the result by total number of messages. If it yields the answer as minimum 98%, your migration process went successful.

The choice of application varies from one user to another. Depending on the requirements of organization, you can deploy the one that better meets demands. As per most organizations, MS Exchange Server is good to their environments that results in better productivity, and hence gives rise to revenue. Make sure that you keep track of the above given tips and implement them to perform a successful migration.

Not surprisingly, when you perform manual migration process, there are chances that you encounter problems at different stages. Consequently, the process interrupts and you need to start from the beginning. It affects cost as well as time factors. Therefore, it is recommended to opt for a professional GroupWise to Exchange migration tool that will simplify the process by automating the task. In addition, the application does not require your involvement, except that you need to provide some important inputs. Nonetheless, ensure that you choose an adequate and effective application that results in expected outcomes.

Author Bio:

Amanda Lakai has been writing as a freelancer blogger since last three years. She is passionate to explore about the various Email recovery tips & tricks and various Email converter tools such as: GroupWise to Exchange Migrator, Apple Mail to Outlook 2011 Converter, NSF to PST Converter and GroupWise to PST Converter etc. She loves to share her findings with the readers so that they can enhance their knowledge-base and also use them in their daily life if required.

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